Flowers for the Women Wearing Veils - Volume II — Page 165
165 Plan a Motto Thus, you should also try to establish your own traditions and rituals. Y ou should also develop your own motto. The method would be t o select two or three moral values as a motto and write them on everyt hing. Make sure it is displayed in all the hallways and classrooms and it is stamped upon books and notebooks. This way, students will be reminded of it all the time and it will be in the forefront of their minds. The professors will also be aware of it and it will be the duty of students to not only keep these in mind, but also continually remind their fellow classmates of these qualities. In the beginning, these moral values belong to a limited group of people but gradually a family is formed a round them. So , you must think of a motto ; c hoose some moral value from Islam which leads to certain kinds of characteristics. Or keep in mind specific behaviors and make a point to distance yourself from them. For example, the quality of working hard is not a habit within our country , the result being that all our efforts are wasted. I f you ask a worker in Pakistan to make you something, he would charge you as much as eight aanas [ one - sixteenth of a rupee ] but if you ask a European worker to make something similar, th e charges might be as little as one aana. The reason for this is that they are in the habit of working hard and so they work quickly, and their laborer will finish the work quickly, whereas our worker takes a long time to complete his work. When I went to England, Hafiz Roshan Ali ra accompanied me. He had a great sense of humor. One day, he asked me very seriously , “ H ave you seen anyone walk in England ?” Obviously , my answer should have been, “Yes, everyone walks around here. Why would yo u ask this about those who live here ?” But I understood what he was hinting at, so I replied , “No, I have not seen a singl e person walk around here. ” He laughed and said, “That is correct, everyone is running. E ven if they are not running, when they walk, it is much faster than us. ” In our streets [ of Pakistan ] , if anyone needs to get to somewhere and there are a lot of people on the streets, the person has to shout, “Clear the way. I need to get ahead. ” However, here everyone just walks about [in a way that] no one has to get out of the way of anyone else. We also watched men working on a building. I t seemed as if the building was on fire, and they were all trying to put it out. The workers